Broken" China

For the past several years, China has been the hot place to go for opportunity investors. All the major investment managers have lured institutional money into the emerging economic goliath. No doubt the arguments seem compelling for China continuing to grow into a dominant power over the next quarter century. Unprecedented development builds out and modernizes the country’s cities and entirely new urban areas mushroom as rural populations move to industrial job sites. An evolving middle class moves into high rise apartments and shops in new shopping centers. Office buildings pop up to accommodate commercial expansion and more hotels are needed for all the offshore visitors — business and tourist. Beijing gets a total facelift for the upcoming Olympics. The powers that be also fund massive infrastructure projects — a highway network, the equivalent of the US interstate system, has been built in just the past decade; mass transit facilities, high speed rail lines, and state-of-the-art airports start operations.

But recent news out of China should make investors wonder whether the growth track won’t hit some bumps. Last week’s pre-New Year snow storm crippled the country. Several factory buildings crumpled under the weight of snow, raising questions about construction quality. The government grudgingly admits it might have made a mistake with Three Gorges Dam and resulting environmental damage. Air and water pollution creates dangerous health conditions in much of the country — about 50% of the country’s vast population does not have potable water. The U.S. Olympic team will ship in food for its athletes, fearing that high steroid levels in local meats could trigger doping failures. Marathoners worry about noxious Beijing air quality. Manufacturers manage to ship overseas everything from tainted tooth paste to unsafe cancer drugs. Who knows what the locals are ingesting and breathing. And more than 300 million Chinese are smokers. Oh, probably no surprise, the government runs the cigarette franchise. In short, it would be charitable to say the country seems to play fast and loose. You could wonder how transparent the growth numbers are and whether they are sustainable. I do.